Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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FRC Prays for Fake Study’s Acceptance

Not only are the anti-gay bigots of the religious right trumpeting that absurd study about gay parents, they’re also praying for people to accept it uncritically. The Family Research Council tells people what to pray for:

Homosexual activists have long insisted that children raised by those who identify as homosexuals do just as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. That proposition has been accepted in many circles, including the courts. Now a Texas study, using the largest sampling of any study yet, shows that children in a home where even one parent has engaged in homosexual activity fares worse by every measure and by wide margins than those raised in heterosexual two parent homes. Predictably, homosexual activists are outraged and dismiss these sophisticated scientific findings (see The Kids Are Not All Right, Risks, Varied Outcomes).

May this study find wide acceptance and help bring clarity to a confused scientific world, and be the first of many more in-depth studies that will demonstrate what we already know from the eternal truths of Scripture (Hos 4:6; Is 28:9-17; Pr 15:7-12; Hab 2:12-14; 1 Tim 4:2-4).

Ooh, those findings are sophisticated. They’re also utter nonsense. I guess this is what passes for peer review among the wingnuts, substituting prayer for thinking rationally.

Comments

Homosexual activists have long insisted that children raised by those who identify as homosexuals do just as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. That proposition has been accepted in many circles, including the courts.

Why is that, I wonder? Is it a massive conspiracy by the Powers That Be? Has the Homosexual Lobby seduced and/or blackmailed every judge in a large number of countries? Could it be the Atheist Horde out to destroy all that is Good and Pure? Or our socialist, atheist, fanatical Muslim, COLORED President engaging in his Godless War Against God?

Or maybe reality just doesn’t agree with their delusions? Nah, that’s crazy talk.

We need to fight against the bad scence of this study. But at the same time, we need to fight against the notion that the result legally or ethically matters. Its unethical to take children away from poor parents even if a legitimate study were to show that they did better with a wealthy adopted family. Its unethical to take children away from their parents even if some legitimate study were to show that they would have better social prospects when placed with a different ethnic group (apart from wealth). And its unethical to take children away from gay parents even if some legitimate study were to show that kids with straight parents had some advantage. None of these things are likely true, but even if they are, its the naturalistic fallacy to break up families or prevent families from forming because of it.

May this study find wide acceptance and help bring clarity to a confused scientific world, and be the first of many more in-depth studies that will demonstrate what we already know from the eternal truths of Scripture

Bad science from the start. The goal of science is not, of course, to demonstrate what we “already know.”

Des someone have a link to somewhere reputable that explains how this study was poorly executed/biased? I’m certainly inclined to believe that it was but that’s a reason for me to be more careful before coming to an opinion, not less. :-)

To make it short, Regnerus, the study’s lead author, used a population-based sampling strategy to identify subjects for his study. Then he asked the study participants whether they had a parent who had any type of a same-sex relationship (for any length of time) and how much time they spent being raised by that same-sex relationship-entering parent. He then lumped all participants together based on the fact their parents had a same-sex affair of some kind.

For the participants who had straight parents, he divided them into groups based on family structure – lived with both biological parents who were married, lived with a single parent, lived with one parent after divorce, was adopted, etc. He then compared all groups to the two-parent biological family group and found differences. That is not surprising, as the data have long showed that children of broken families, of any kind, have worse outcomes than those who have two married bio parents.

The study says nothing about gay or lesbian parenting however, because the participants in the study were very unlikely to live with the same-sex loving parent for any length of time. In fact, there was no requirement that the participants had any contact with their same-sex loving parent after their family’s break-up. Regnerus found only two participants who were actually raised by lesbian couples, far too small a sample for any meaningful analysis.

This is genius!
If successful, they can pray for people to ignore climate-change science, along with those pesky facts like melting ice caps and here where I live the more and more frequent absence of actual winters.
Smoking will be OK, because evidence that cigarettes kill people can be memory holed by their deity.
Think of the implications. Any facts that make them uncomfortable or doubtful of their invisible monster in the sky can be conveniently ignored. … Kind of just like they’ve successfully done for 2,000 years.

I notice in boxturtle’s summary that Regnerus isolated a category for Intact Biological Family (IBF), in which the respondent lived with married heterosexual parents until age 18 and remain married at the time of the study. NONE of the the other categories are analogous to this; i.e., a gay/lesbian household in which the child was raised to age 18 and in which the parents are still living in a stable married relationship. It seems that all other comparisons are invalid if you wish to draw conclusions about the relative health of children raised by straight vs. gay couples. Could he not find stable “married” gay couples who had raised kids from infancy to adulthood? Such couples exist; I know a few. Of course, if you go by the legalistic definition of “marriage” none of these couples are, because their relationship hasn’t been legally recognized. But they’re married nonetheless.